Authors: Debra Burroughs
Sofía’s mind was consumed with thoughts about her new relationship with Carlos and her impending circumstances. Her time at Olivia’s house was quickly coming to an end, and Carlos’s time to leave for the fields and orchards of California was fast approaching.
“
Come with me, Sofía,” Carlos suggested one night. “You need to work and a place to live. Come with me to California and we’ll work together. You can keep the baby near you when you work, and there are houses for the laborers.”
“
I don’t know, Carlos,” Sofía answered with apprehension.
“
What’ll you do if you stay here? Think, mujer, what other choices do you have? Come on, Sofía, come with me.”
“
I guess there’s really nothing to keep me here,” she resigned. “I don’t have a lot of choices.”
“
No, you really don’t.”
“
I don’t know, Carlos,” she said, shaking her head, taking a deep breath and letting out a long sigh.
“
Come on,” he continued to press.
“
California does sound beautiful and exciting,” she said, trying to convince herself.
“
It is,” Carlos told her. “And the weather is better, not so hot. Not like here in Arizona.”
“
Hmmm.” Sofía took a minute to weigh her options, which weren’t many to choose from. “Okay. I guess I’ll go with you,” she finally gave in.
She thought going with Carlos to California was the answer to her dilemma, but what she didn’t know was that he had left a wife and three children in Mexico. Ana hadn’t mentioned it either. Sofía found out much later that Carlos was looking to start a new life as much as she was. His inviting her along to California turned out to be more for his benefit than for hers.
The morning after Sofía made her decision, she found Olivia in the garden. She told her cousin that she and little Eva would be leaving soon, going to California with Carlos. The news distressed Olivia. She had met Carlos on a few occasions and found him domineering and a bit shady. After he would visit Sofía at the house, she checked the main rooms to make sure nothing was missing. She was not at all sure Sofía was making the right decision, but she couldn’t help her anymore. Her cousin was all grown up with a child of her own, and she had to make her own way in the world.
She was sad, too, that Sofía was leaving before her wedding. She loved her like a sister and wanted her to be there. But the group Carlos was traveling with would be heading off to California in a less than a week. If Sofía and Carlos did not go with them, but stayed for the wedding, all the jobs would be filled by the time they got to California.
Within the week, Sofía packed up her things in the large leather suitcase that Olivia gave her, bundled up her baby girl and was on the road to California with Carlos and the other migrant workers. It took three days of driving on hot and dusty roads to reach the Central Valley of California.
The caravan made regular stops together and slept in cheap motels along the way, putting as many people in a room as they could fit. Sofía felt lucky that she and Carlos only had to share their room with baby Eva.
Lying in bed the first night, Sofía wondered if she had made the right decision. It wasn’t like she had many options. Baby Eva was fussy and had trouble sleeping, which only added to Sofía’s second thoughts. She was heading into the unknown, carrying her innocent child along with her. Only time would tell.
Chapter 8:
The Fertile Valley
The winding two-lane highway dropped down from the heavily-wooded Santa Cruz Mountains into the lower end of the fertile Central Valley of California. The vista opened up and Sofía and Carlos saw lush, green fields ripe for the picking. The workers they were traveling with had heard about a large farm in Salinas that needed field hands to pick strawberries. By the time they reached the farm, though, most of the jobs were already taken.
Next, they all drove over to a couple of strawberry farms in Watsonville, hoping to get jobs picking. But, again, they were told the farms had already hired all the hands they needed for the season.
The foreman suggested another farm outside of Hollister that was getting ready to harvest their tomatoes and onion fields and would be looking for laborers. There were also some orchards, he said, starting to pick apricots soon. Hollister was about 45 minutes away, so they raced off to hopefully beat out anyone else from taking the jobs first.
Following the foreman’s directions, they reached the Williamson’s farm and found there were many jobs still available to work in the fields. The Williamson’s foreman hired everyone in their group, including Sofía. She planned to keep the baby in a basket by her side and keep moving it as she worked, row by row, shielding her from the sun with a blanket, keeping Eva in her mother’s shadow.
The foreman gave them directions to the worker’s housing and told them he would meet them there in a little while. It was part of his job to assign them their living quarters and give them keys.
The migrant workers’ camp was a couple of miles from the farm, not much more than rows of shacks. The caravan took off and headed to their new home. As Carlos turned from the main road onto the driveway as the foreman directed, Sofía’s heart sank. She saw where she and Eva would be living. They were unpainted, well-worn shanties with little porches and a common dirt driveway. She hoped their new home would be better inside.
As the men unloaded their belongings from the trucks, Sofía got out of the cab with Eva in her arms. She walked up to one of the shacks to peer in the window while they waited for the foreman to arrive with their keys. The windows were so dirty it was hard to see in. Hoping by some chance the door had been left unlocked, she tried the knob. It was unlocked.
She pushed the door open and looked inside. It was very sparse with bare plank floors, stained with the bodily fluids of its previous occupants. The pungent odor of urine and sweat was nauseating.
There was little more than a small living room and two cramped bedrooms without closets. Hoping for decent cooking facilities, she found the kitchen area at the back of the house had an old wood stove, a small, dirty sink, and a couple of rickety cabinets. There were no indoor toilets or bathing facilities, those were communal and outside.
Although the living arrangements were not what she was used to in her aunt’s fine home in Arizona, it did remind Sofía of her humble beginnings in Mexico, where her mother and father filled their simple dwelling with love. Sofía hoped that she would be able to scrub and clean this place and make a home for Carlos and little Eva. Even though she and Carlos had not married, she was living as his wife and wanted to try to make the best of the situation.
She spent the long, hot days working in the onion fields with her baby by her side in a basket lined with a blanket. Stopping every couple of hours, she would nurse Eva and then place her back in her little basket on her shady side. Sofía tried her best to protect her baby from the heat and dust, which only added to hardship of her work.
After the onions were finished, they worked picking garlic, and then tomatoes. At the end of a long day in the fields, exhausted from the heat and hard work, Sofía had to make supper for Carlos and herself. On top of that, she still had to tend to baby Eva.
One evening, as she was trying to get Eva to go to sleep, she held her and paced around the room with a gentle swaying motion. Carlos had gone to the bar with his co-workers, so she was alone with Eva. It was in quiet times like this that Sofía thought about her life.
Working in the fields was more difficult than she thought it would be. Carlos had made it sound like an adventure when he talked her into joining him. But it wasn’t an adventure, it was back-breaking. It was so much harder than she recalled it as a child. Her papa never made her work in the field all day long, not like him and Mama.
Sofía remembered her parents bending over in the fields in Arizona for hours on end, the searing sun on their backs. Starting early in the morning, just as the sun was coming up, they worked until early afternoon. The farm bosses usually let them have a break in the hottest part of the day. Sometimes, though, if not enough rows were completed, they would be expected to come back and put in a few more hours as the late afternoon turned into early evening. The crops had to be harvested before they went bad or a thunderstorm could damage them.
If Papa could see her now, she thought to herself, he would be so disappointed. He had sent her to live with Tía Consuela so she wouldn’t have to be a migrant worker, but here she was. She regretted the road she had chosen, she wished she had made other choices. As much as she hated this life, though, what else could she do? That question played over and over in her mind. She needed a place to live and a way to take care of her daughter, she reminded herself.
“
Carlos is pretty decent to me and Eva, most of the time,” she told herself. Sofía couldn’t say she ever loved him, or if he ever loved her. But she had made the decision to go with him, to share his life and his bed. She felt she needed to stay with him just to survive. She often wondered if he only wanted her there to make food for him and satisfy his sexual needs, as well as be an extra pair of hands to work the fields to earn money. They needed each other, but it had nothing to do with love.
Baby Eva was asleep now and Sofía put her down on her little make-shift bed, an old dresser drawer lined with a soft pink blanket Olivia gave her when her daughter was born. She stood over her baby girl for a moment, praying Eva would grow up and have a better life than she did.
“
Sweet dreams, mi hija,” Sofía said as she walked out of the room and carefully closed the door.
At the end of that first harvest season, Sofía found she was pregnant again. After work one evening, she told Carlos she was expecting another baby in the spring, and he actually seemed happy.
“
I want a son,” he said. “Girls are not much good in the fields. But a son, a son can work hard and bring in more money. Besides, a son will carry on his father’s name.”
“
I can’t make this baby be a boy,” Sofía tried to reason. “It’s up to God, not me.”
“
A son,” he said again, as if he was giving her a direct order, and walked outside to tell his compadres.
Sofía watched him from the cracked front window. A group of men had gathered and were standing around outside drinking beer, some leaning on the porch posts, when Carlos walked out there. She watched him strut over to them, like a proud rooster. A few moments later, a loud outburst of cheers erupted, along with many of them slapping him on the back to congratulate him.
She wondered if this new baby would help their relationship. Eva was not his baby, and he often let her know it. Maybe having a child of his own would make him a better man. She hoped this baby would be a boy, for her sake and the baby’s. Surely that would make him happy and life would be more pleasant, or at least tolerable.
Producing a son for him, though, was not within her power. As she told him, it was up to God. All she could do was pray.
As the summer harvest season came to an end in late August, Carlos and the other migrant workers in their camp decided they should move on to the Imperial Valley. This valley was nestled in the far southeast corner of California, bordering Arizona and Mexico. They had heard there was work there, picking carrots and helping to harvest the sugar beets.
Carlos loaded their things into an old brown truck he purchased for the trip. The rest of the group also packed up their things right away, and they all left Hollister together for the Imperial Valley.
Once again, they found work in the fields and set up housekeeping in another encampment of small, well-worn shanties. Sofía’s belly was growing with the new baby, and she would not be able to work much longer. She tried to work a few hours a day in the fields, which would at least make a little more money to help them get through the winter. The rest of her day was taken up cooking, doing laundry and tending to little Eva.
Sofía tried to enjoy that time with Eva. Soon the next baby would be coming, so this time with her daughter alone was precious. She watched Eva learn to pull herself up on furniture and attempt to walk, cheering her on. Sofía would pick her baby girl up and twirl around, singing to her, dancing around the living room with her. It brought back memories of her days singing in the restaurant in Phoenix. For brief periods of the day, she could forget the hardships of her life and get lost in pure joy.
They spent the mild winter there in the encampment in the Imperial Valley and made plans to go to Ventura County, California, in the early spring, after the baby came. Again, there had been word of work there. Eva was walking now, which kept Sofía on her toes. Soon she would have two babies to take care of, in addition to returning to work in the fields.
As the time approached to give birth, Carlos became increasingly anxious. Worrying about another mouth to feed and about Sofía being less productive in the fields, he began to drink more and become angered more easily. He came home late one night from drinking with his friends, obviously drunk. Sofía had already put Eva to sleep and had gone to bed herself.
Carlos was stumbling around in the dark and yelling, “Sofía! Dónde estás? Where are you, Sofía!? Sofía!” He stumbled into the darkened bedroom.